Yesterday @gniksivart asked me "How many Bitcoins do you think are missing?".
Its a tricky question as nobody can predict the exact number.
In March 2015, 14 million Bitcoins were said to be in circulation.
As of June 2017, it reached a total circulation amount of 16.4 million coins, which is about 78% of the total amount of
Bitcoins that there ever will be in existence.
According to an estimate, Out of these 16.4 million Bitcoins, around 4 million (or 25%) have been lost.
As we know, Bitcoin's issuance will stop when the number reaches a total of 21 million
bitcoins (in existence), but the number of actual active Bitcoins will be far lower than that amount
because of these missing coins.
Now BTC can be lost due to a number of reasons like
forgotten wallets, hardware failure, Someone hacking your details, irrecoverable passwords or private keys,
Intentionally “Burning” BTC, death of the bitcoin owner or even sometimes by a simple goof up
like sending bitcoins to an unowned address, where the BTC would be transferred but be lost forever.
Unfortunate incidents like these have caused around 4 million Bitcoins to be lost forever
and as they say, its almost impossible to recover them.
I shared this with my brother who laughed it off by saying -
"seems like the future treasure hunting will be all about recovering those lost coins"
hmm...Interesting! Let me know what you think.
